I'm Sure There was a Door Here

At the University of Cincinnati, among the often bizarre and quirky campus buildings, is the building that houses the College of Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning (DAAP).

This is a small portion of the overall building.
From the University of Cincinnati.

The old building that existed prior to this one was a nasty piece of work whose windows leaked, the colors were abhorrent, and the thing looked like a design nightmare out of the 1950s/1960s. This new building was completed in 1996, when my wife was still a graduate student at the university. Her office overlooked the new building, so one day she took an opportunity to go explore the place out of curiosity. She'd heard the gossip that the building had no right angles in the classrooms at all and that there were stairs that went nowhere, so here was her chance to see for herself. 

She was unable to confirm that first rumor, although the classrooms she did view certainly had non-standard corners in them,* but in a way she did confirm the second rumor. She followed a set of stairs down to where she thought it would lead her to another floor, but much to her surprise when she opened the door it led directly outside, locking behind her so she couldn't get back inside. I'm sure that someone will point out that technically speaking the door DID lead somewhere, I'd argue that a one-way ticket outside is not what most people have in mind when they mean "somewhere".**

I got to thinking about my wife's experience with that building when I began thinking about design goals for dungeons in World of Warcraft. This came out of previous post, when I pointed out the vendor just outside of the exit of The Deadmines' dungeon. That exit from The Deadmines is designed to be a one-way exit, as when you leave you're immediately dropped down a wall to where you simply can't re-enter that nice, swirly dungeon entrance. That's by design, of course, so that you don't skip all of the dungeon just to go to the end. 

Likewise, there's other dungeons that if you run right up and engage the final boss the entire area of trash mobs comes running and will beat you to a pulp. The most obvious examples are Scarlet Commander Mograine and High Inquisitor Whitemane in the Cathedral portion of Scarlet Monastery and Eranikus in Sunken Temple, although I believe it also happens with Emperor Thaurissan in Blackrock Depths. I have never "poked the bear" with Thaurissan, but I've been in the other two instances where someone pulled early either by accident or on purpose.

Yeah, this entry into SM: Cathedral ended
about as well as you'd expect.

When you think about it, those examples emphasize a dungeon design that reflects the dungeon as a "real place": when a boss is attacked, everybody comes running to defend the boss. Other parts of that design philosophy are evident in these Vanilla instances, such as:

• The tendency to not have a single pathway through a place.*** Sure, there's a single path through the various Scarlet Monastery wings and The Deadmines, but Scholomance is an actual house with multiple levels while Blackrock Depths and Stratholme are actual cities with no truly defined pathing.
• Dead ends with no real purpose other than to make a place feel "lived in". Think of the "living quarters" in Blackrock Depths, where there may be some mobs present but they really don't have anything there other than actual beds, dressers, etc.
• Instances buried deep in an external area. Deadmines, Razorfen Downs, and Maraudon are the most obvious examples.
• Instances that have a wide range of enemy levels, so they're designed to be returned to as you gain levels. Uldaman, Scarlet Monastery, and Maraudon are the most obvious examples, although Blackrock Depths and Blackrock Spire also qualify.

***

This also jogged my memory because of my running some of the TBC instances on the Anniversary server and how much the design philosophy had changed from Vanilla to TBC. Gone are the multipath instances; all of the instances have a single path through them (although it could be argued that The Steamvault has multiple paths to complete the first section that opens up the last portion) with the pathing itself cleverly disguised by twists and turns to hide the single path through the instance. While there are some dead ends to the instances, there are far fewer of them than in Vanilla****. The instances themselves are easily accessible via the main entrance, except for the few endgame instances that require a key to unlock, but even then if someone else has the key you can still enter because they can unlock it for you.***** Finally, the instances in TBC are designed with a specific level range in mind; there's no wide range of enemy levels to be found in a single instance of TBC.

Naga... Nazis... Same difference: I still hate them both.

The change in design philosophy not only highlights the change in instances being less of an immersive RPG experience and more of a stepping stone, but also a change that emphasizes the desire of players to rerun instances, looking for specific gear and drops (and in the case of TBC Classic and later expansions, reputation/renown). Even I'm not immune to rerunning instances, because if it's fun I'll do it again. That's why I still go visit Blackrock Depths so often; it has NOTHING to do with hunting for the Hand of Justice drop that has eluded some of my melee toons for years. 

(Lies! It's all lies, I tell you!)

But still, the shrinking of size and time spent in an instance is somewhat secondary from my perspective because there's less of an opportunity for exploration and immersion while inside an instance. Of course, you'd need a group conducive to such a thing, but even wandering around solo in an instance like I did in the Vanilla dungeons back when I first began playing in Wrath on my first max level toon was quite an experience. 

***

You know, back in 2014 when I was finishing up my original time with Retail, I spent some time in some of the Wrath instances, soloing them just to see what I missed when followed the group (which followed the meta). What surprised me the most were some of the intro areas in the ICC 5-mans that I never encountered, particularly in the Pit of Saron, because there was a specific path all groups took when running the instance so I never knew about other parts of that big open mining pit in the beginning. I didn't feel cheated, exactly, just disappointed. 

That being said, even I can get sick of a place. I remember doing the Loremaster achievement back in 2010, and to complete that it mean I had to go into some instances such as Stratholme and Sunken Temple so many times I got sick of them. Given that you had no in-game maps available, especially for Sunken Temple and the two Blackrock instances, it was an eye-opening experience getting lost to the point where my head hurt. It was at that point that I wished that those instances had modern LFD equivalents. But as the old saying goes, be careful what you wish for...

*Fun fact: professors don't like it if you wander by the classroom they're lecturing in and peer through the door. I discovered that one the hard way, although the first time I found this out was in grade school, when I was picked up early by my dad to go to the doctor for an allergy test (the kind where they prick your back about 20-30 times and smear different allergens on the open cut to see which ones you're allergic to). Leaving my grade school, he made a wrong turn and instead of going toward the exit he went toward a 5th grade classroom. I tried to stop him but he ignored me and opened the door, only to find himself the target of the ire of one of the nuns. I wanted to melt into the floor.

**Apparently the architect of the building, Peter Eisenman, did have a stairwell that lead nowhere --as in it ended at a wall-- in the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University. 

***Yes, the player base has created their own optimal pathing through a lot of these instances, but you're not locked in to a very specific path in the same way as The Deadmines or the Scarlet Monastery wings are. 

****And they're almost non-existent in Wrath and what I remember of Cataclysm instances.

*****I think this is even the case in Karazhan, the intro 10-person raid in TBC. At least my friends seem to think so, because they've made it plain that they want me to join them in a Karazhan run. But let's be honest, they'd essentially be carrying me because I have quest greens and a few low-mid level instance drops among my toons.